The Campaign Builder's Guild

I design for the sheer fun of it. I really enjoy writing something, coming up with a new idea for a race, or some aspect of a nation or world. I'd be on this site a lot more if I had more internet access. I do realize that I'm more focused on my own writing than on helping give constructive criticism to another's writing. I'm trying to rectify that now.

Why do I design?
I find something I just absolutely have to change those: "humans are the most varied, adaptable race', "demons are inherently evil", etc.  Because I don't believe in everyone else's old clichés, no matter how much those sacred idea-cows are part of shared and/or popular mythology.  I need to find the new horizons of thought, and that's just not going to happen if I don't break a stereotype.

Why don't you design/critique more?
I don't design any more.  I wish I could, but something stops me.  It may be a short attention span, it may be that the whole point of designing is really to entertain myself and it's gotten to the point where it just doesn't need to leave my head, or maybe it's because I've divorced myself from what really made me design in the first place: elements of other peoples' fiction that just didn't sit right with me.
I don't critique for a combination of the first reason and another: I find many are too weighed down with the baggage of "bad things are/are about to happen/are happening/have happened, and the entire setting is about rubbing it in your face" OR "this setting concentrates on being so well thought out and realistic that it forgets to have fun".  Those may be a gross overstatements, but that's just the way it feels to me.  I'm not someone who can easily ignore personal bias.

Re-reading this thread, I've also realized another reason why I design:

Dissatisfaction with the mundane world.

Seriously. Sure, there's a lot of interesting stuff in reality, and I happily partake in it when possible, but I can't just jump over to a foreign culture - or even different city - just because I feel like it. Odds are I'll never meet another race in my lifetime, never fly under my own power, never visit a city floating in the sky, never explore the void of space (maybe not on the last one.) So, instead, I make a world where I - and others - could, a form of escapism that also aids others escapism.

Hey! Welcome back, SCMP.

I'm not so sure I'm "back".  I just happened by today and saw something I actually felt like responding to.  Like I said above I can't seem to have any real ideas.

I design for a variety of reasons ...

- I can totally immerse myself in the creation process which is a great way to relieve stress
- its an exercise in imagination, creativity and writing skills
- my players enjoy (usually) the settings I create which is very satisfying

Besides, its just plain fun.

Somehow, I don't think I have ever taken the time to anwser this.
(Which is unlike a big-mouth like myself.)

Why do I design?
This is art to me.  I Didn't see it as such when I started, but this setting has become my major creative enterprise for the last quarter century.  An interactive art project, with all the players contributing to some level.  There is some internal creation dynamic going on, and the 2 sessions a month push me onward when the motivation is not there.
There is nothing so satisfying when the internal consistency is such that the players totally immerse in-game.  

Well, that came out like blather.  Though it is the truth.
 :blah:

I've been designing settings (or, more realistically, a setting) because I actually find it more fun than playing. When I did play RPGs, I always had this urge to write down extensive backgrounds for my character, or to write a journal of ongoing adventures from the perspective of my character. Even with other games I play, like Magic, I find the collecting and building aspects far more interesting than the playing, most of the time.

Also, as much as I like the published settings from WotC, I want to be able to push the boundaries of literary genres in my settings.

I'm currently between semesters, so I've come back here for a chance to not let my creative, analytical, and writing skills atrophy.

I design, first and foremost, as a hobby. I think the quality of most of my settings stands as proof of that...

Aside from that, though, I design because world building allows myself yet another creative outlet. There's things you can do in designing a world that you can't do in a drawing, or in a song, or such (likewise, there's things you can't do in world building, that one or more other creative outlets allow). It started when I had an idea that was just too grand in scope to fit in a single drawing, and this was the best way I've found to express that idea. That idea developed into being Xiluh, my first setting.

After that, I felt the need to start on a couple other ideas, but those never really panned out very well.....